In the automated processing of poultry for consumption by the public, it has been the common practice in recent years to perform as many steps as possible by automated machinery. Typically, the birds are hung by their legs in an inverted attitude from an overhead conveyor system and carried through a series of poultry processing stations. A typical poultry processing station might include a carousel type machine whereby the chain of the overhead conveyor system extends about a sprocket and the movement of the chain rotates the sprocket. In turn, the rotating sprocket drives the carousel type machine which receives each bird on the processing line and performs its function on each bird before the bird moves away from the machine. Examples of the type machines that function on the carousel principle include the vent removal, the bird opener, the eviscerating machine, and cropping machine. A carousel machine of this type is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 3,958,303.
Lung extractors have also been constructed in the carousel style, whereby a series of extractor tubes are mounted on the carousel style machine and as the birds move in an arc about the lung extractor, an extractor tube moves downwardly into the previously eviscerated cavity of the bird and a vacuum is drawn through the extractor tube so as to extract the lungs and possibly other remaining viscera from the visceral cavity of the bird.
One of the problems with poultry lung extractor machines is that when a bird is not moved into each station of the rotary machine, the system attempts to draw the vacuum at the empty station. This causes a substantial amount of energy to be unnecessarily expended at the empty stations, causes an increase in noise level at the station and in the plant overall, and tends to reduce the amount of vacuum that can be drawn at the other stations.
When the necks of birds are to be broken, one prior art process causes the necks of birds suspended from a conveyor system to move into a locator which lifts the bird slightly about the neck and locates the neck adjacent the hard anvil-like surface, and a hammer element moves into engagement with the neck toward the anvil element, causing a break in the spinal column at the neck of the bird. A system of this type is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,097,960.